Re: Why Cornell's Institutional Repository Is Near-Empty

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

For various reasons, I have so far needed to ask [FOR copies of 
ARTICLES] people I did not already know about 5 or 6 times.

Once I received a request to send a reader's report on the 
article in exchange to show I really needed it.

Another time I received an incredulous note that the library I 
was at didn't have it

A third was in a Postscript format that I couldn't read,

The other 2 or 3 times there were no problems.

Years ago, when as a student I was still sending out reprint 
request cards, they too had about a 50% response rate. I 
understand that rate is considered rather high, but I was at one 
of the best known labs.

And for people whom I know, it of course always works, and in the 
old days researchers sent their friends reprints without being 
asked.  Both the formal and the informal systems were and remain 
oriented to the needs of elite research groups

Further, this matches my slightly more systematic result: out of 
11 social science manuscripts on author's sites, 5 were not 
retrievable as posted 18 months later.

Other studies on linkrot have similar results.

Retrieval systems for Green OA aren't perfect, but even Google 
Scholar can do better than 50%.

David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
dgoodman@princeton.edu


----- Original Message -----
From: Ben Eisenbraun <bene@pbtype.com>
Date: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 5:44 pm
Subject: Re: Why Cornell's Institutional Repository Is Near-Empty
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> On Mon, Mar 19, 2007 at 07:26:46PM, Greg Tananbaum wrote:
>> What I wonder is whether this list, and the scholarly 
>> communication space generally, would be better served by 
>> asking whether Cornell, or any institution for that matter, 
>> can provide any compelling incentives short of a mandate to 
>> encourage wholesale IR participation.
>
> There aren't any.  That's why Stevan is so big on a mandate. 
> That's why no one has been able to sell the authors on using 
> IRs. The IR solves a problem that authors don't have.
>
> No one says "I wonder what Cornell is working on today" and 
> then goes to check out the Cornell Dspace.  Access issues are a 
> paper tiger; authors will readily share their work with anyone 
> that shows interest in it.
>
> The current system works well enough for most authors.  The 
> librarians, on the other hand, seem to be getting shafted. 
> :-)
>
> --
> Ben Eisenbraun
> PbType LLC
> http://pbtype.com/